Tales From the Secret Life of Austin James
by WasWoksa
Summary: Life as he knew it changed the day Austin kissed his faithful secretary. He would need to sleep in a real bed, call his dad, go shopping with a sergeant, and find out whether he could handle a relationship more demanding than the universe.
1. Chapter 1

_~Disclaimer: Probe and its characters, Austin James, Mickey Castle, and Graham McKinley do not belong to me. Everybody else in here is a product of my own imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead or actual events is coincidental._

Forward: Aftermath (With **Austin's commentary** in 1st person, bracketed)

The wall clock displayed 6:30 p.m. and Mickey Castle closed her weekly planner for the last time that day. She checked across the room to the left and saw Austin still there, crouched down on the floor with a box resembling a wireless joystick and three softball-sized, gelatinous-looking orbs, muttering to himself as he carefully positioned them and moved one of the joystick handles this way or that. He had been preoccupied with that particular project for at least the last hour. So far, Mickey couldn't gather from her own observations what possible purpose he had in mind for it. She would have asked him about it, but he had been unwilling to talk about anything all day, preferring single-syllable answers and grunts. On the days he was wearing that sort of mood it could be near impossible to shake him out of it. As close as they'd become working together over the past couple of years, he had an inner life that more often than not kept her mystified. **{I'm determined to keep my distance from you for a while. I've been strangely affected by the events of the past few days, and I haven't figured out a solution to this imbalance.}**

"Hey, Austin," she called, rising out of her chair. She stretched her arms over her head and leaned left and right, letting her back crack. "I think I'm ready to head home. You need anything else before I go?"

She expected a vague response to the negative and perhaps a muttered good-bye, but instead, he looked up and set aside his joystick. "I'll walk you out," he said. Then he stood and crossed the room towards her, standing some distance away between Mickey and the door**. {Distant or not, I will never again leave you to walk out there alone.}**

She smiled appreciatively. She didn't believe there was likely to be any danger walking the twenty feet or so to her car alone, but she wasn't at all inclined to discourage his company. After her harrowing ordeal with armed gunmen outside Austin's warehouse residence just four days ago, even standing in that lot when she arrived this morning gave her some anxiety.

While she put away her planner, shrugged into her coat, and picked up her purse, Austin remained stationed in his chosen position, several feet away, looking her way if not directly at her, hands shoved in the pockets of his tan slacks. He sure had been distracted today, even for Austin James. **{I'm finding my attention compulsively directed toward you, and I cannot seem to integrate my recent fear for your life into my previous schema of thought. I suspect I might now be irretrievably in love with you, and I don't know what to do with this new thought pattern.}**

"Is something wrong?" she asked, trying to sound casual. She was still mentally debating the wisdom of asking him about his aloofness, given that she had some idea of its cause. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted his answer. He was so private, such a recluse, and between the early hours of Friday morning and late that same night, circumstances had forced him so far outside his comfort zone, he must still be reeling. In the course of one 24-hour period, he had played hero to Mickey in her peril, threatened to quit his post as president of his company, and submitted himself to dinner with Mickey and her family at her home. Certainly she could appreciate his social retreat, even from her, come Monday. All the same, she found it acutely disappointing. It was hard to accept that the consolation of a very bad experience for her was only an additional bad experience for him.

**{I have reached the conclusion that I don't want to talk about it.} **"What makes you think something's wrong?" he shot back, confirming her suspicions by the tautness of his tone.

"Well," she said lightly, "you've hardly said two words together all day. Are you thinking about something?"

He smiled as tightly as he spoke. "I'm always thinking about something." **{Really, Mickey, I don't want to discuss it.}**

She came a few steps closer to him. "Anything good?"

Maybe that helped. He exhaled and seemed to deflate a little. **{All right, then have it your way...But where do I start?}** But then he ran a hand through his hair and said, "Mickey, your mother knows you just work for me."

Mickey shrugged. "Yes. I'm pretty sure. Why?"

"After dinner on Friday, she told me to come again."

"She was being polite. She says that to anyone who isn't a boor."

"She invited me to Thanksgiving." **{I think your family understands where I'm heading better than either you or I do.}**

Mickey had to stifle a smile. She had missed that. Mom could be sneaky. "She knows you live alone. She didn't want you to be lonely on the holiday."

"Why would I be lonely?"

"I don't know, Austin. She just met you. Maybe she assumes everyone who spends Thanksgiving alone must be lonely."

He opened his mouth, but whatever he was planning to say got checked and didn't come out**. {Does your mom assume I'm your boyfriend because you brought me home for dinner?}**

"Austin," Mickey said emphatically, after a pause, "we're friends, right? It's okay if my mother asks one of my friends to come back. It's fine. It doesn't mean anything." She should have stopped there, but a twinge of annoyance prompted her to add innocently, "Do you think she thinks we're dating or something?" **{Oh hell! I knew it! You can read my mind!}**

He seemed to recoil a bit, and she was a little sorry she had been so blunt. He grimaced and walked away. He was fretting. She followed him while he made his way to a panel of controls and began to fidget with them. "I was out of line the other day," he said**. {Why didn't I see before how completely inappropriate this was?}** He glanced toward her a moment. "I should have brought you home Thursday night, and I had no business being at your family dinner." Anticipating her objection, he continued quickly, "Even though it was perfectly innocent, it still could have given a very different impression." Now he looked almost angry. "Secretaries go home at night." **{We've got to go back. This is all wrong.}**

"Austin!" she cried, stunned. "Since when have you been concerned when I pull an all-nighter here? There have been plenty of times I've worked round the clock for you, starting with day one!" Mentally, she was beginning to kick herself for ever inviting him home to dinner. She hadn't imagined it would render him ridiculous.

**{I need the deprivation tank. I need the deprivation tank.}** He began walking again. She followed him again. He frowned, deep in his thoughts. "This was different. You weren't working."

Impatiently, she blurted, "And what? Does that mean you were taking advantage of me? You make it sound like I was sleeping with you." **{Why did you say that? That image...I don't need this in my head.}**

That little gem stopped him abruptly. His piercing blue eyes glared at her momentarily**. {Let's see how you like feeling awkward.}** Then he said with irony, "Actually, you were."

She colored. "Did I miss something?" **{See? Not pleasant, is it?}**

"You were sleeping," he said pointedly, "on the couch, and so was I."

"You were?"

"Yes."

She eyed him curiously. "How long was that?" As far as she knew, he didn't sleep anywhere but in his modified tool cabinet.

"About twenty minutes." **{This was phenomenal, for me.}**

For a moment her eyes widened, and then a great laugh burst out of her that she simply couldn't contain. "That's it?" she cried. With grand merriment, she added, "I don't think I'd admit that." **{Apparently, it was less than phenomenal for you.}** Her amusement faded when she realized he seemed embarrassed. He obviously wasn't appreciating the humor of the situation. "Austin," she said, more gently. "I can't believe you're taking this so seriously. I know it was a weird situation. I was upset. You were just being there for me. You were being a good friend. Really, that's it. Nothing's changed."

"Nothing's changed," he echoed, looking at her with some sort of inscrutable expression. Did he doubt? **{Are you blind? Have I ever experienced this degree of positive emotive energy elicited by another human being? I want you so bad I might combust.}**

"Nothing," she insisted. **{So this is nothing. Let me show you 'nothing'.}**

That inscrutable expression was still fixed on her when he took two strides toward her, curled his arm around her back, dipped his head down to hers and pressed his lips against hers firmly. For an instant she stiffened in utter surprise, and then she closed her eyes and made herself relax. This development was unexpected, but not unwelcome. His kiss was lengthy and insistent. Whatever it was lacking in tenderness it was making up for in conviction. When it ended, he eased her upright again, the solid pressure of his hand still present on the small of her back. She was glad for it, or she may have fallen over, such was her feeling of imbalance in the aftermath of the embrace.

Mickey felt electrically charged and slightly shaky in the legs. She couldn't immediately find her voice, and neither, it seemed, could Austin. She had been mistaken. Something had changed between them, and probably more radically on his side than hers. She had always admired him, trusted him, maybe even loved him if she was willing to own it. But knowing him and his impenetrable solitude, she had long ago buried any romantic inclinations. Now they stood looking at each other, unsure of what to do or what to say. **{There's no going back. I am in completely unfamiliar territory, Mickey. I hope you wanted that as much as I did. Or did I scare you? I can't tell by the look on your face. Please, say something.}** Finally, she licked her tingling lips and stammered breathlessly, "Y-You told me the u-universe was all you could handle."

**{I'm recently convinced the universe has nothing on you. And since we've cleared up our misunderstanding, I intend to repeat this behavior frequently... even if it means a Thanksgiving dinner lies in my future.}** A slow, sheepish smile crept across his face. "I changed my mind."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 1. The Next Great Adventure

Mickey Castle shrugged off her jacket and dropped it either onto or next to a nearby desk chair. She couldn't imagine what might happen next, but it certainly wouldn't involve going home just yet, and she was a good deal warmer now than she had been not five minutes ago. She once heard that most of the internal damage resulting from motor vehicle accidents comes not from the impact itself, but from the shear of organs and vessels still in motion when the body carrying them becomes suddenly inert. Yes, that was an apt analogy for this moment. She felt car-wrecked.

Austin James had kissed her.

She tried to wrap her brain around that thought. It wasn't happening. He was still standing before her, hands clasped in front, bright blue eyes fixed on her and a smile lighting just the corners of his mouth. What a peculiar discrepancy between them, his composure unruffled and hers knocked flat.

"So," he said benignly, acknowledging the haphazard placement of her jacket with a nod, "you're staying a while?"

She blinked. Austin James, the very man who had spent the entire day essentially avoiding her, now capped it with an embrace appropriate to a paperback romance. Admittedly, he had been wrestling against the desire to deck his secretary with that kiss from some point prior to her arrival in the morning, and its effect was jarring. A curious thought struck her. She remembered one other time feeling a little bit as she did now. "Um, Austin," she began slowly, "you don't think you've been listening to subliminal messages again or anything, do you?"

His smile dropped. "No!"

She instantly regretted the remark, and set out to repair the damage with both hands, grabbing his arm at the elbow just as he abruptly turned away. Her sudden action arrested him mid-turn, and jerked him nearly off balance. "I don't mean I didn't think you meant it," she protested, maintaining her hold. "I-I didn't know you…" She stopped and tried again. "We never…" She was stammering as at least four trains of thought converged and competed for simultaneous expression. Her grip on his arm relaxed and she closed her eyes. With determination, she collected herself as much as she could and blurted, "Well, now what do you want to do?"

She looked up warily and chanced eye contact. He was smiling again, a warm, good-humored smile that soothed her and made her smile back, in spite of the growing knot of anxiety in her gut. She couldn't lie to herself and say she had never considered Austin in a romantic way, maybe even entertained an occasional fantasy. Well, why not? He was legend, with his profound genius, his own Fortune-500 company, his lithe physique and those crazy blue eyes. But he was also her employer. And he was her dear friend. And, she considered with amusement, he was an eccentric who lived in a warehouse and slept in an isolation tank. Up until today, he was, to the best of her knowledge, committed to his relationship with science to the exclusion of any human entanglements.

"Let's get dinner," he decided, retrieving her jacket from where it hung over the chair seat and handing it back to her. He plucked his keys off his desk and headed toward the door, with every expectation that Mickey would join him soon enough. She always did.

She watched him go for just a moment and touched her fingers to her lips, lips that so lately drew Austin's hearty attention. It was tempting to ignore all the flags telling her this prospective involvement could be troublesome. The day they met he had promised her the greatest adventure of her life, and since then he never disappointed. He stirred her, challenged her, elevated her, even while carrying himself in such a brusque, aloof way. In so many ways, she suspected she knew him better than anyone in the world, and he teased out more potential in her than she imagined possible. Perhaps this was not a bad idea. Maybe it would be good for them both. If nothing else, she hadn't been kissed like that in a sorry long time.

"What are you waiting for?" Austin barked, poking his head back in the door.

Mickey smiled to herself. Maybe this was just the next great adventure. Quickly, she stuck an arm into the sleeve of her jacket. "Okay!" she called back, snatching up her purse and hurrying after him. "I'm coming!"

They ate dinner that night in a restaurant they had visited together a good many times, a cozy steakhouse perhaps ten minutes from the warehouse. Austin liked to order the halibut, Mickey the house cheeseburger. Together, they sipped hot tea. It was a strange meal they shared tonight. Even though the food, the conversation, and even the usual booth were all the same, Mickey couldn't get past the thought that this time it was a date. If Austin was affected similarly, he gave no indication. His appetite and affect were no different than any other night. By meal's end, Mickey was beginning to wonder whether the kiss had actually happened.

Austin had dropped the tip and risen from the table to leave, and Mickey had tried to convince herself the whole romantic episode had been a hallucination on her part. But as she followed him to the foyer of the restaurant, she shook her head at the thought. No, it was impossible to discount something so palpable as imaginary. Perhaps, then, it was a fluke. Austin was never known for being predictable. He must have experienced a moment of impulsive weakness. Maybe it really was the result of subliminal messaging.

Austin held open the door, inviting Mickey to pass ahead of him. As they exited the building, he finally removed any doubt of his current sensibilities when he reached for her hand and kept it. She looked up to his face, startled. His gaze was panning over something in the distance, making him appear as natural and unconcerned as if he walked holding her hand every day and every occasion.

As they approached Austin's battered, wood-paneled station wagon in the parking lot, he stopped and turned to Mickey. "It's a nice night. Let's walk a while."

She nodded, unable to find her voice to answer him. Austin started toward the nearest sidewalk, bringing Mickey along beside him. A few steps into the walk he cut his usual pace by half, admirable evidence of his attempt to stroll in a leisurely way. The street was quiet, two lanes running along a mixed block of commercial and residential buildings. The moon shone in a clear sky and the air was still. Into the stillness, Austin said, "What are you worried about?"

"What makes you think I'm worried?"

"Mickey," he chided gently, smiling down at her, "you've been screaming it at me with your body language since we left the warehouse."

How could she forget? Before all else, Austin was a master observer, his keen eyes and restless mind always analyzing, calculating, knowing. "Sorry," she said, suddenly feeling foolish.

"Is it because you work for me?"

She lifted her eyes to take in his face. His gaze was trained on something in the proximal landscape. "I guess that's some of it, Austin," she admitted. "I mean, don't you think it's weird to work closely with someone you're dating? It's distracting. People talk. And no one gets any work done." Without meaning to, she realized she had let her mind wander into a place long passed and gladly forgotten. The intrusion was brief. With a slight shudder, she doused the spark of a memory and turned back to the matter at hand. "Austin?" she ventured, tentatively.

He dismissed the landscape and turned to her with his brow raised quizzically. "Yeah?"

"Is that what we're doing? Are we dating now, since you kissed me?"

He gave the question thoughtful consideration for a time which seemed to Mickey uncomfortably long. Finally he replied, "That depends." The barest hint of a smile crossed his lips. "Do you want me to kiss you again?"

She looked at the ground and bit her lip in a poor attempt to hide a burgeoning smile. Her shoe scuffed the sidewalk and hit a pebble, sending it flying. Skeptical or not, she saw no good reason to be less than honest. "I guess that would be all right." She glanced his way, allowed her eyes to lock with his, and smiled expansively.

"Then we're agreed," Austin concluded as solemnly as if he'd proclaimed a scientific tenet. He stood a little taller and nodded decisively. "We're dating."

They managed to walk almost the length of one storefront before Mickey stopped, causing him to stop as well by the accompanying tug on his hand. "Well?" she prompted, with a meaningful look. She scowled impatiently at his evident confusion, daring him with eyes cast heavenward to misunderstand her intention.

He blinked once as he registered the nature of her unspoken request, and then his eyes gleamed. Sliding the fingers of one hand into the soft curls at the base of her neck and wrapping his other arm around her, he pulled her in close to himself and obliged her with a new kiss that contained all the tenderness missing from his first, more zealous effort at the warehouse.

When at last he released her eager lips from his own, he clasped his hands behind her back and appraised her flushed and moonlit face. "Is that better?"

She nodded. "Much."

Drawing a ragged breath, he freed her from his embrace and reclaimed her hand. "Let's walk some more, okay?"

They walked on in reflective silence. This evening, or rather most of the last week, was playing out like a phantasmagoric vision. How she could morph from Austin's faithful assistant to Austin's apparent girlfriend in the space of a few days was a phenomenon that was sure to take some time to digest. He had nicely assuaged some of her trepidation about their new dynamic, but not all. She frowned as another complication surfaced in her mind.

"How do you think this will go over at Serendip, Austin? Isn't there some kind of rule against bosses dating secretaries?"

He shrugged, unconcerned. "I doubt that will pose a problem. I'm president of the company. Who's going to tell me no? Graham?"

"I guess not," she conceded. "But there's still the distraction of it." She sighed. "I can't be an effective secretary if either one of us is coming around all the time being affectionate." They exchanged sheepish smiles. "How do you want to handle it?" she asked.

Smiling conspiratorially, he stopped walking and released her hand to hold up his fingers in a scout's oath. "I won't touch you while you're on the clock."

"Then we're agreed," she said with mock seriousness, before a giggle betrayed her. "That goes for me, too."

They resumed walking in silence. His hand found hers again, their fingers interlocked, wrists brushed. Nice. Then he said, "Anything else on your mind?"

One troubling thought still lingered, unwelcome but inexorable. She hesitated. "I shouldn't even say it."

"Go on," he insisted.

She stopped walking and turned toward him, her eyes dark with apprehension. "If we should stop…" She trailed off.

"We won't," Austin countered firmly. He started up walking again. She noticed a tighter grip on her hand.

For a while, they didn't say anything more. Then Mickey said softly, "I'd have to work somewhere else."

Now Austin stopped walking. He faced Mickey and took both her hands. "All right, what can I say to convince you it won't happen?" He sought out her eyes with his, achieved contact, and smiled. "Remember when we met? My life was between me and the universe, and that worked for a long time. Now I'm convinced that knowing the universe isn't enough. This is new for me, and I didn't get to this place overnight. Do you think I'm going to just forget and go back?" Now he was studying her face intently. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Her face grew warm under his unrelenting gaze. "I understand," she murmured. With that, she felt herself drawn into the cradle of his arms, her cheek pressed against the textured fabric of his button-down shirt, his breath warm in her hair. It was such a strange and lovely place to be.

It was after ten o'clock when Austin drove back to the warehouse and walked Mickey to her car. "I have to be at Serendip most of the morning," he said, "so I'll call you at the lab and we can meet for lunch, okay?"

"Okay," she replied.

"That's off the clock, right?"

Mickey smiled impishly. "Right."

With an appreciative smile, Austin placed his hands on her shoulders and planted a modest peck on her lips before standing erect and stepping back.

Mickey opened her eyes and gaped in startled disappointment. "Is that all?"

In his enigmatic way, he raised just the corners of his mouth and said, "I think that's enough for today. Better not overdo it. After all, it's only a first date."

Opening the door to her blue sedan, she wrinkled her nose at him, then turned and gave his arm a playful poke. "Spoilsport," she complained with an endearing pout. "Okay, I'll see you tomorrow."

"Go right to bed."

Mickey grinned. "I will. And you, too. Go right to…tank," she finished teasingly, recalling his sleeping quarters. She slid behind the wheel of her car and started the engine.

Austin watched her drive away. He watched until her taillights disappeared over the hill up the street. Then he sighed and rubbed his brow. "Go right to tank," he muttered, and he punched in the key code to the warehouse door.


End file.
